Rosie O’Brien

World Bank Fall 2017 DelegateGrinnell, IA | Lawrence, KS

Rosie is a thinker, artist and soil protector based in the Kaw Valley region of the Great Plains. She grew up climbing trees and eating homegrown veggies in occupied Kansa and Osage territory, in so-called Lawrence, Kansas. In 2016, Rosie graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa with degrees in Political Science and Studio Art, and has since lived in Slovenia, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, New Jersey, Wichita, and Washington DC. Most recently, she has participated in an ongoing tree sit at Camp White Pine in rural Pennsylvania in resistance to Energy Transfer Partner’s Mariner East 2 pipeline.

Over the past five years, Rosie has become fluent in Mandarin Chinese, exhibited art in Berlin and Lawrence, organized for two Congressional campaigns, trained scores of anti-corruption activists in Momentum theory, led workshops and student groups on divestment campaigns against industrial food systems and animal confinement operations, worked on an organic bee farm in Germany, assisted with legal support for the 2017 Inaugural Felony Riot defendants through Defend J20, and continued to expand her tree climbing and direct action skill sets in the wake of ongoing ecocide and destruction of nature across the globe. She is currently working on a narrative nonfiction book about the political economy of love, and strives to build a world where wildness can be renewed.